Beauty

(Photo of a photo on exhibit at the Chester County Historical Society. By Robin. 2007)

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. ~Kahlil Gibran

Daytime television is a vast wasteland. That said, I did indulge in it somewhat this morning, mostly for some background noise. I would’ve been better off with music, but for some reason I turned on the television. Perhaps it was that rare need to find out what’s happening in the world. Most of the time I’m so wrapped up in living that I don’t keep in touch as much as I think I ought to. Then I turn on the television and realize that I’m much better off without the messages that the media brings us.

Disclaimer: This entry will not contain anything new. It involves a subject I’m sure has been debated more than a few times. This is just my view after a morning of messages from daytime television.

It seems to me the primary message from the media to women is: You are not good enough.

You need to call a weight-loss program to lose weight, wear makeup to cover up your flaws, spray yourself with perfume to cover up your scent, use feminine hygiene products to cover up the dirtiness of being a woman, buy anti-wrinkle creams and eye creams to keep from showing your age, exfolliate your unsightly skin, color your hair because your natural color isn’t good enough. And whatever you do, don’t grow old in this society that worships at the altar of the almighty Youth.

Nothing is good enough. We must be improved and improved and improved upon, to the point that cosmetic surgery rates are climbing way up.

Is it any wonder that many of us (women) feel inferior?

We spend all this money on products that are doomed to disappoint because true beauty doesn’t come from the latest pair of jeans, bottle of perfume, or face cream.

True beauty comes from within. True beauty is naked, without makeup, without the latest fashions, without perfume, without anti-wrinkle products. True beauty comes from a life well lived.

And every now and then, true beauty can be a gift that is given to us by someone else. My husband looks at me with eyes that see me as beautiful, and I feel that beauty warming and growing within myself, looking back at the reflection of beauty in his eyes.

I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking of myself in terms of the messages I have received through television, magazines, and even from family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. The good news is that once I hit my forties I began to realize that a lot of those messages were false messages, designed to help me fit a mold by spending and consuming.

Finally, as I approach the age of 50 (next year), I’m beginning to know that I am beautiful just as I am. And in this deep down knowing, I have also learned that I am worth it, not in the commercial sense of hair dyes, but in the sense of caring, nurturing, loving, and living.

Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic. ~Rosalind Russell

Rosalind Russell was right. My best cosmetics come from the glow I get while hiking in the woods, walking through the neighborhood, working on a collage or a drawing, writing, cooking a delicious meal, spending time with friends, making love with my husband (or just being in his presence), singing, dancing, listening to music, playing with my granddaughter and discovering a newness to life by seeing through her eyes, taking photographs, enjoying an afternoon in an art gallery or museum, traveling and learning about the world and different countries and cultures. I could go on and on, the list is almost endless.

Some of the most beautiful women I know are women who have experienced a lot in life and then taken those experiences and turned them into an inner light of joy, love and an appreciation for the moment. Their beauty shines.

Yesterday’s sunset

(Sunset in WC. February 2007. Photo by Robin)

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life — the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value. ~ Claude Monet

The days are growing longer and the sun has been moving further to the west each evening. Spring will be here soon.

I love watching the sunset from our apartment in the evenings. We’re on the fifth floor and have a great view, watching the sun go down behind the trees far off on the horizon. There’s been a great variety of color in the sunsets, all kinds of shades of purples, blues, yellows, golds, oranges, reds, and pinks. I sometimes see all of that within one evening’s sunset.

As the sun goes down each evening, I give thanks for the gift of the day as well as the gift and beauty of the moment.

The Magician

(The Magician from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.)

I brought a deck of tarot cards with me on our sabbatical adventures. I have several decks to choose from, but I decided on the Rider-Waite deck because they are a way (for me) of going back to basics. I started learning the Tarot with the Rider-Waite deck and I felt a need to go back to the beginning because it’s been a while since I’ve worked or even practiced working with the cards. There just didn’t seem to be time when I was working and then the back injury hit and I was high on paid meds for a long time. Hardly conducive to doing anything that requires the least bit of thought.

Now that my mind is free and clear (and clean and sober), the time had come to pick up the cards again.

The Magician has been showing up a lot in my tarot readings lately. Last night I did a quick 3-card body-mind-spirit reading and there he was again, smack in the middle of things. With all these Magician sightings, I thought it high time I paid attention and looked into the Magician a little further.

I pulled out my favorite tarot book: Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack. I’m going to need to go beyond reading about the card, but Ms. Pollack’s book is always a good place to start.

In my quest to become the healthiest me I can possibly be, it interests me that the Magician showed up in the “mind” position of my latest reading when this card strongly symbolizes manifestation. Then it occurred to me that, of course, the thought can be the beginning of manifestation. This is well symbolized in the position of the Magician’s arms, the Magician’s wand raised “to bring into reality the spirit force” (R. Pollack) and his other arm pointing downwards to ground or manifest this force.

The Magician stands surrounded by flowers to remind us that the emotional and creative power we feel in our lives needs to be grounded in physical reality for us to get any value from it. Unless we make something of our potentials they do not really exist. ~ Rachel Pollack

I don’t know how many times I’ve read this description of the Magician. Enough that I ought to have it almost memorized by now. But it wasn’t until this time around that the messages of the card began to jump out at me (and practically knock me in the head!).

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, planning, and deciding. I’ve even made a few steps to bring these thoughts into action. With the Magician having such a strong influence in my life lately, it’s time to move beyond thought and beyond hesitation, and get on with it.

The divinatory meanings of the Magician derive from both hands, the one which receives the power and the one which directs. The card means first of all an awareness of power in your life, of spirit or simple excitement possessing you… Like the Fool, the card refers to beginnings, but here the first actual steps. It can mean both inspiration to begin some new project or phase of life, and the excitement that sustains you through the hard work to reach your goal. For many people the Magician can become a strong personal symbol for the creative force throughout their lives.

Secondly, the Magician means will-power; the will unified and directed towards goals. It means having great strength because all your energy is channelled in a specific direction… The Magician teaches us that both will-power and success derive from being conscious of the power available to everyone. Most people rarely act; instead they react, being knocked from one experience to the next. To act is to direct your strength, through the will, to the places where you want it to go.

~ Rachel Pollack

The Magician will, indeed, become a “strong personal symbol” for me. It’s likely the Magician has been driving my thoughts lately in terms of how I can meet my goals. One conclusion I arrived at before he plopped down in the middle of last night’s reading is that I’ve been too scattered the past few months, trying to work on several goals at a time rather than focusing and directing my energy towards that which is most important to me at this point in my life. This scattering of my energy has, in a sense, diluted it so that I’m no closer to accomplishing any of my goals now than I was a few months ago.

I’m going to work with the Magician for a while, apply focus, energy, strength, and will-power to that which I need to accomplish over the next few months: healing my body and my Self.

Unless we make something of our potentials they do not really exist.

Ain’t that the truth?

Snowy streets

(Snow storm. Photo by Robin. 2007)

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky;
Arrives the snow.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Winter was a little slow in getting here this year, waiting for February to bring us the snow and ice. We had a lovely snow storm yesterday evening, large fat snowflakes twirling and dancing and bumping into each other along the city streets.

(Snow storm. Photo by Robin. 2007)

Later in the evening the snow turned to ice, coating the trees so they shimmered and shined in the streetlights.

Today it rained, melting most of the snow and ice.

That’s February for you. Snow one minute, a melting rain the next. The Sky coming down to visit with Mother Earth, covering her in a variety of watery ways.

Here

(Through the woods. Photo by Robin. 2006)

Lost

Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner, Who Shall Be The Sun?,
Indiana University Press 1978

I love this poem. It’s very meditative to me. I like the idea that “if you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.”

I frequently engage in visualizations during meditation when I’m working on healing myself (body, mind or spirit). My safe spot, so to speak, looks a lot like the photo above. It’s a pine forest, sometimes a redwood forest. Recalling it has become simply a matter of saying “Here.” Whenever I’m tense or afraid or wide awake in the wee hours of the morning, unable to sleep, I can take myself back to this space: Here.

I’ve always thought the woods, especially coniferous forests, are more cathedral than many churches I’ve set foot in. Light from the heavens pours right in through the roof of the trees, flooding the sacred space of earth. There’s no need of stained glass windows, walls, or circles. The sacred and the magical are just… Here.

Tail end of February

(Gay Street in February. Photo by Robin. 2007)

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter’s long, cross-questioning brunt.

~ D. H. Lawrence

Connections

(Tree near the pond. Photo by Robin. 2006)

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. ~~ John Muir

Spring is in the air

(Spring flowers. Photo by Robin. 2006)

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed. ~ Corita Kent

Spring fever is upon me. I’m yearning to put on my hiking boots and go out into the woods, to see if anything is beginning to break through what’s left of the last winter storm. The weather is warming up and it smells of Springtime, fresh starts, and new beginnings.

It’s at times like this that I find myself missing home, wondering what is happening at the pond. Then I remind myself that this sabbatical has given me a whole new world to explore during the changing of the seasons. Granted, it’s a different kind of world, this urban environment. But it’s not devoid of the charms of nature. There are trees lining the streets and neighborhoods with yards and gardens to get to know as we cycle through winter into spring and then into summer.

The sun is shining.  It’s a good day to take a long walk and start to get to know the nature that surrounds me.

Morning reflections

(Clouds visiting the pond. Photo by Robin. 2006)

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. ~ John Muir

A quiet winter day

(Brandywine River. Photo by Robin. 2007)

Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan